Beyond Duality: the `Choreography` of Gender in Dacia

The online postgraduate journal
of the College of Arts, Celtic
Studies and Social Sciences 2013
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender in
Dacia Maraini’s novels
Maria Morelli
University of Leicester
Dacia Maraini has created a body of work that questions the mechanisms of
oppression and manipulation at play within the economy of a heterosexual
regime. This means challenging the role of women inasmuch as they are
primarily identified as wives and mothers, a challenge linked to and emerging
from the questioning of the notion of the (female) body as performing certain
gender roles which are, in Judith Butler’s words, ‘a legacy of sedimented acts’
(Butler, 1988).
Following this line of enquiry, in this article I will be looking at the question of
female sexuality as tackled in three works by Dacia Maraini: Donna in Guerra
(1975), Storia di Piera (1980) and Lettere a Marina (1981). I shall posit that,
although at odds with the gender roles patriarchal society would expect them
to fulfil, the female characters portrayed in these texts do not seem willing to
embrace an exclusive sexuality either. Rather, they would appear more inclined
to perform what Butler defines as a ‘process’ or a ‘becoming’ (Butler, 1988) or,
in my reading, Jacques Derrida’s utopia of a ‘choreography’ of gender (Derrida
and McDonald, 1982), understood as an adamant rebuttal of any essentialist,
prescriptive, interpretation of gender and sexuality.
In Maraini’s narratives gender formation translates into an on-going process
which—resonating with a Derridean utopia—becomes less a matter of seeking
a unifying subject than of expressing the blurring of the boundaries of a single,
unitary category.
‘What if we were to approach…the area of a relationship to the other
where the code of sexual marks would no longer be discriminating?’
—Choreographies, Jacques Derrida
An acute observer of and an active participant in Italian reality, Dacia Maraini
has created a body of work that gives an insightful account of the plight of
women through different epochs.1 Hers is an opus which questions the
mechanisms of oppression and manipulation at play within the economy of a
heterosexual regime while promoting the idea that the re-appropriation of
one’s identity begins from within: a new politics which starts from the body,
understood as a site of agency charged with subversive potential.2 But she is
also, at the same time, always looking to effect change in the real world. Indeed,
as she herself has pointed out in a recently published interview, in all her
works, “the relationship between the person[al] and the collective—meaning
16
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
the political, not political in the sense of parties but ethical—those fundamental
values are there” (quoted in Seger, 2011, p.29; Maraini’s emphasis).
In the first instance, this means challenging the traditional role of women
inasmuch as they are primarily identified as wives and mothers, a challenge
linked to and emerging from the questioning of the notion of the (female) body
as performing certain gender roles which are, in the words of American
philosopher Judith Butler, “a legacy of sedimented acts” (Butler, 1988, p.523).
Namely, they are gender scripts which, being passed down from generation to
generation, women are called to constantly re-enact. Ever since the publication,
in 1990, of her influential Gender Trouble, issues of gender, sexuality and
performance have always been central in the work of Butler, whose main goal
is the destabilisation of the traditional notion of the subject, aimed at exposing
its performative nature. For stressing how, far from being a cause, the subject is
rather a result of a series of Foucauldian structures of powers—“identity
categories that are in fact the effects of institutions, practices, discourses, with
multiple and diffuse points of origin”—, Butler’s argument proves to be
illuminating here (Butler, 1990, pp.viii-ix; Butler’s emphasis).
Following this line of enquiry, in this article I will be looking at the question of
female sexuality in three works by Dacia Maraini written between the mid1970s and the beginning of the following decade: Donna in guerra (1975),
Storia di Piera (1980) and Lettere a Marina (1981). My analysis will highlight
the subversion of the socially prescribed gender roles allotted to women within
a male-defined perspective. I will suggest that, although at odds with the gender
roles patriarchal society would expect them to fulfil, the female characters
portrayed in these texts do not seem willing to embrace a ‘pure’, exclusive
sexuality either. To this end, I shall turn to the work of French feminist Monique
Wittig and her formulation of a “third gender” (the lesbian) to suggest that,
although radically departing from patriarchal heterosexuality and being
virtually contemporaneous with the novels under scrutiny, her postulations
cannot encompass Maraini’s oeuvre.3
Wittig starts from the assumption that lesbians are not women. In order to be a
woman, in her view, one ought to have a relationship of dependence with men.
Thus, the category of women as we understand it is but a product of the
straight (heterosexual) mind (Wittig, 1992). Indeed, and in diametrical
opposition to this, Maraini’s characters would appear more inclined to perform
what Butler defines as a “process” or a “becoming” (Butler, 1988, p.523) or, in
my reading, Jacques Derrida’s utopia of a “choreography” of gender (Derrida
and McDonald, 1982) which he develops in a 1982 interview whose title
‘Choreographies’ one might find particularly suggestive in the context of a work
dealing with notions of the fixity of gender and the (de)construction of identity.
The passage where the French philosopher speculates on the implications of
the erasure of socially discriminating sexual markers reads as follows: “I would
like to believe in the masses, this indeterminable number of blended voices, this
[shifting scenario] of non-identified sexual marks whose choreography can
Aigne ©2013 UCC
17
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
carry, divide, multiply the body of each ‘individual’, whether he be classified as
‘man’ or as ‘woman’ according to the criteria of usage” (Derrida and McDonald,
1982, p.76). In this sentence, the ontological roots of gender identity are called
into question. Derrida’s “choreographies” unmask and deconstruct the
mechanisms of power at play in the definition of gender, namely, Butler’s
“sedimented acts” which are attributed to masculine or feminine bodies, in
short, how subjects are created and which ones, to recall Butler again, do or do
not matter (Butler, 1993, p.v). Similarly, in the works which constitute the
object of the present study, normative gendered codes are subverted and
disrupted; after all, the deconstruction of heterosexual hegemony is for Maraini
first and foremost a political strategy, a tool to which she resorts in order to
extricate her female characters from a rigid patriarchal frame. Gender becomes
an on-going process à la Butler which, resonating with a Derridean utopia,
encompasses polymorphous manifestations thus eluding pre-existing social
scripts.
Current criticism on the novels under consideration has focussed primarily on
the theme of female identity, most notably in the analysis of Donna in guerra,
(Tamburry, 1990; Cavallaro, 2007), or the mother-daughter bond (Dagnino,
1993), a bond that has also been read as transcending biological motherhood
thus proving to be instrumental in the carving out of a space, for women, within
patriarchy (Picchietti, 2002). Not a great deal of criticism has been produced
that scrutinises the treatment of gender relations in Maraini.4 This article aims
to go some way towards rectifying this imbalance by illustrating that Maraini’s
work underscores the restrictiveness of codified gender roles and explores
possible alternatives. I shall do so by engaging in an exploration of the
sexualities as depicted in her texts in order to assess their potential for
subverting the heterosexual norms of patriarchy.
Frequently regarded as Maraini’s most feminist text,5 Donna in guerra charts
the trajectory of the extrication of the protagonist, Vannina, from the
mechanisms of subjugation which are at work within the economy of a
heterosexual regime. Carol Lazzaro-Weis successfully illustrates, in a few lines,
the author’s intent: “In Donna in guerra, Maraini confronts the theme of
accepting responsibility for one’s life, as difficult as that may be, in her
depiction of the transformation of a withdrawn, dependent female who hides
behind her traditional subservient role into a woman ready to accept the risks
involved in taking charge of one’s self” (Lazzaro-Weis, 1988, p.300). Written in
the form of a diary, the story begins with an account of Vannina’s monotonous
daily routine while she and her husband are holidaying on a fictitious Italian
island. In her relationship with Giacinto, the two characters re-enact,
emblematically, the archetypal wife-husband hierarchy. Not only does the
compliant Vannina not dare question Giacinto’s authority, she also perceives
her position of subservience as a natural consequence of her role as ‘wife’: “È
vero”, she once concedes to herself in reply to her husband’s asserting her
dependence upon him, “ha una forza terribile in quelle sue braccia bionde e con
questa forza tiene in piedi il nostro matrimonio”.6 For his part, Giacinto is
Aigne ©2013 UCC
18
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
unable to come to terms with his wife gradually developing a stronger selfawareness. When this happens, he accuses Vannina of violating what he sees as
her ‘true nature’ (and thus, by extension, the ‘true nature’ of women as a
category): “Tu di natura sei buona, calma, affettuosa, paziente, remissiva; oggi
invece fai la stravagante, vai contro natura”.7 He tells her this after she has
voiced her intention to join her friend Suna in a trip to Naples to investigate the
condition of women working illegally at home in exchange for miserable wages.
Maraini is very careful in unmasking, behind the protagonist’s mock repetition
of her domestic chores, the patriarchal construction of the female subject.
Drawing on Derrida, Butler advocates deconstruction as a tool for recognising
the mechanisms of exclusion of the phallocentric system that lead to how the
female subject is constructed as such. It is Butler’s assumption that “there is a
matrix of gender relations that institutes and sustains the subject”.8 Simply put,
“construction is neither a subject nor its act” but “a process of materialisation
that stabilises over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and surface”
(Butler, 1993, p.9). Thus, what remains implicit at this stage of the narration is
indeed a parodic element to Vannina’s actions: the protagonist performs her
duties as a housewife in a compulsive manner which suggests submission to the
norm. Vannina is what the system expects her to be. As such, her diary opens
with a list of her housework tasks, which she records in a somewhat
telegraphic, and obsessive, way: “Mi sono messa a sparecchiare. Ho lavato i
piatti. Ho sgrassato le pentole. Ho sciacquato i bicchieri”.9 When Vannina
refuses to give her husband a child, he goes as far as to rape her while she is
asleep. Giacinto, thus, emblematically comes to embody patriarchy’s imposition
of the institution of motherhood upon women that American critic, novelist and
poet Adrienne Rich so passionately denounced in Of Woman Born (Rich,
1976).10 But Vannina terminates her pregnancy. Following Derrida’s
formulation, then, Maraini’s protagonist has subverted the encoding logic
which would have her be a wife and a mother, but she has also (and here
resides the author’s political strategy) carved out her own alternative sphere to
the constrictive one bestowed upon her, an “alternative relational space of
sisterhood as a feminist revision and extension of the relationship between
mother and daughter” (Picchietti, 2002, p.14).
It is only thanks to the bond that she develops with emblematic female figures,
that the protagonist can reconnect to a female experience and find the strength
to embark on the road towards self-awareness. With the island laundress
Giottina and her friend Tota, Vannina replays the mother-daughter bond. With
a taste for gossip and scabrous stories, the two matrons return Vannina back to
the pre-symbolic (semiotic) sphere. As has already been noted by Pauline
Dagnino, the secluded and dark space of the launderette, where their
relationship develops, acts like the Kristevan “chora” (2000, pp.232-245).11 Predating the Symbolic, the “chora” is, for French feminist philosopher Julia
Kristeva, the place of the mother; it knows no language but only a chaotic mix of
rhythmic pulsions, needs and feelings—a blessed sense of unity with the
maternal figure (1974, pp.93-94). And indeed, the erotically charged language
Aigne ©2013 UCC
19
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
that Tota and Giottina create, at times seems to be a non-language. Dense with
symbolism, it both attracts and repels Vannina who, through these symbolic
mothers, is nevertheless initiated into female complicity. But it is only thanks to
her “social sisters” (Picchietti, 2002, p.119), that is the rebellious figure of Suna
and the unconventional Rosa Colla (the latter helping Vannina through the
process of undergoing an abortion) that our protagonist will find true
liberation.12 It is to the figure of Suna, Vannina’s paraplegic friend, and
especially to her polymorphous sexual identity,13 that I now wish to devote
some attention.
Giacinto’s contemptuously calling Suna “half woman”, which in turn recalls the
epithet “crippled” which the Neapolitan women also address her, has been
positively recast by critics as the outward mark of the character’s subversive
gender identity (Gabriele, 2002, p.246). This is a process that, I would contend,
follows the Butlerian trajectory of resignification (or “resigni-fication”, as
Butler writes it) of hate speech (Butler, 1997, p.41). Suna’s defining herself as
“half man half woman” complicates things even further and casts doubt on her
sexual orientation. Indeed, if we agree with Wittig that lesbians are not women,
then Suna—for seeing herself as a (half) woman—would be “instrumental in
maintaining heterosexuality” (Wittig, 1992, p.30). For Wittig there is no such
thing as being a woman, or a man, as the category of sex has been created as a
consequence of patriarchal oppression and has then become an alibi for social,
economic, psychological differences between two artificially constituted
sexes.14 While Wittig’s position, for its formulation of the “third gender”—the
lesbian—might be judged as tinged with essentialism, Maraini’s somewhat less
radical conclusions demonstrate an equal awareness of the pitfalls deriving
from a reduction of the sexes to two available possibilities. In overt opposition
to this, Maraini’s Suna seems to embody the subject advocated by Derrida that
goes “beyond the binary difference that governs the decorum of all codes,
beyond the opposition feminine/masculine, beyond bisexuality as well, beyond
homosexuality and heterosexuality which come to the same thing” (Derrida and
McDonald, 1982, p.76).15 At the beginning of Donna in guerra, Suna is in love
with Santino, who at the same time is in a relationship with Mafalda.
Eventually, the two women will find themselves in love with each other.
However, as a response to the group’s coercive reaction to her and Suna’s
coming out, Mafalda agrees to give up living their homosexual relationship
openly, her fear of losing her place in the movement quite possibly becoming a
metonym of her fear to lose her place in society.
It may be hard to resist the temptation of seeing in Suna the image of the
advocate feminist. She is an active member of a Marxist movement, on whose
behalf she conducts a survey of the exploitation of female workers in the South
of Italy and it is she who awakens Vannina from her state of passivity and
subservience to her husband. And yet, upon closer examination, some
inconsistencies in her character will soon come to the fore. The reader will
discover that she is no less dependent on her father than Vannina is on
Giacinto, although for different reasons. Suna’s dependency on the paternal
Aigne ©2013 UCC
20
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
figure is merely of an economic nature. Also, and for a sort of law of retaliation
which can be interpreted as a note of irony on Maraini’s part, she is, in turn,
financially exploited, first by her male lover Santino and then by the movement
itself. What is more, despite preaching liberation from restrictive gender roles
and not approving of Mafalda’s complicity with the homophobic views of the
political group, after being expelled from this, Suna gives up not only on her
lesbian lover, but also on life, since she commits suicide.
Suna’s tragic fate leaves the reader in something of a quandary with regard to
the outcome implicit in the defiance of codified sexual roles (that is, the
subversion of patriarchy that she herself embodies) and calls for several
considerations. I shall advance my own by returning to Wittig’s theory on the
figure of the ‘lesbian’ as a third gender transcending any form of categorisation.
This is a position with which Butler herself concurs, at least inasmuch as the
performative character of the same is concerned (Kirby, 2006, p.27). This idea
of the subject as a social being, that is, deeply enmeshed into the intricacies of
cultural demands is, it seems to me, very much present in Maraini’s oeuvre
where, despite presenting us with exemplary instances of transgressive
sexualities (of which Suna is certainly the most notable example), the author is
also equally preoccupied with making us aware of the inevitable repercussions
deriving from defying the patriarchal order, thus looking into alternative,
possible ways, of confronting the norm. In this connection, I agree with Virginia
Picchietti when she asserts that Maraini’s texts provide a space for the
investigation of those models put forward by feminist groups in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, which are now referred to as “entrustment”.16 Finally, I would
contend that Maraini’s strategy as we see it at play in the novel succeeds in
promoting female solidarity as a key weapon for women within patriarchy
while at the same time, and even more importantly, escaping the trap of
essentialism. Not only does Vannina disentangle herself from a patriarchal net
of expectations and impositions, but also, on more than one occasion, she
herself displays a sexuality that goes against sexual norms. I refer here to
Vannina’s seduction scene with Orio, Santino’s adolescent brother, which will
end with the two of them having sexual intercourse and, back to Vannina’s
teaching memories, the attraction she feels for one of her pupils—both
instances underscoring the destabilization, carried out by our female
protagonist, of socially prescribed sexual behaviours.
Exclusion deriving from non-compliance with societal expectations is also the
price paid by another of Maraini’s characters: the controversial mother in
Storia di Piera. Written in the form of a dialogue between the author and stage
actress Piera degli Esposti, the book is a biography of sorts; in Maraini’s own
definition, this is “the story of a highly complex relationship between mother
and daughter […] deeply pagan […] scabrous” (quoted in Bongarzoni, 1980). It
is the chronicle of Piera’s turbulent life, the sexual abuses she suffers as a child,
the pulmonary illness that afflicts her and her acceptance of her mother’s
subversive nature. Undoubtedly the most emblematic character in the novel,
the latter epitomises non-conformity to the Law of the Symbolic order, the
Aigne ©2013 UCC
21
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
primordial forces of nature against culture, against patriarchal society and the
influence it exerts upon women. Her unconventionality and extraneousness to
convention, but also, at a metaphorical level, the clash between the Semiotic
(Nature) and the Symbolic (Culture), is well exemplified by her behaving
according to the cycle of the seasons: “d’estate era degli altri […] d’inverno si
chiudeva, dormiva”.17 Here, the reference to the goddess Demeter, with whom
the flourishing of the earth and, therefore, the cycle of the seasons is associated,
is inescapable. As the Greek myth goes, when her daughter Persephone is
abducted and taken to the underworld, Demeter, upon whom the fruitfulness of
the earth depends, renounces her divine functions to look for her, thus bringing
about winter. Even more relevant to our analysis is the revision of the myth by
Italian philosopher of sexual difference Adriana Cavarero in her groundbreaking work In Spite of Plato (1995). In Cavarero’s hands, the myth of
Demeter translates into a timeless narration standing for women’s power (and
right) to generate, or not to generate, life; in other words, it becomes a cry for
women’s re-appropriation of their own body and, in turn, its disentanglement
from the constraints of the institutionalised reproductive function to which it
has been confined in patriarchy. Similarly, Piera’s mother, like a modern
Demeter, is attuned to the cycle of nature, refusing to identify with sociocultural gender scripts. Furthermore, she loves both men and women, collects
lovers and instigates her daughter’s sexual initiation. Piera’s mother fails to
conform to the social order, exhibiting instead her unbridled sexuality or—as
Kristeva would probably have it—jouissance.18 Culpable, in the eyes of society,
and her husband, for defying the Symbolic order, she is declared mad.
Marginalisation (and electroshock therapy) is the exacted price for subverting
the norm. Curiously though, what others perceive as an illness, for Piera, who
will always turn a deaf ear to everybody else’s judgment, is just “una forza
meravigliosa” that possesses all the power of attraction.19 Imperturbable when
faced with people’s dirty looks and scorn towards her mother, the latter
acquires in her eyes a somewhat mythical dimension as a victim of society: a
“persona tragica in Piera’s own words.20
Piera’s own sexuality is far from unproblematic. At times verging on incestuous
drives towards both parents (by her own admission she shares with the mother
the same sexual partners out of a wish to possess her through their bodies), she
is obsessed with the male organ and fantasizes having it. Her androgynous
looks, as opposed to the more effeminate appearance of her brother, lead her to
imagine herself in a man’s body. Thus, just as has been said à propos of Suna in
Donna in guerra, Piera too is “half man, half woman” and such is how her father
perceives her: “Ho l’impressione che delle volte mio padre credesse di aver
fatto una specie di uomo: metà uomo e metà donna”.21
The defiance of a prescriptive sexuality in the novel is exemplified by an
account Piera herself gives of her mother: “Mia madre è una persona così vasta
che non saprei come definirla, ogni descrizione la limiterebbe”.22 Piera’s mother
recalls the figure of Suna, and not just because of her ambiguous sexuality, but
Aigne ©2013 UCC
22
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
also for her tragic fate of marginalisation. Lacking female support, her
subversive nature cannot lead her beyond a mere critique (deconstruction) of
patriarchal ideology. Her cry against non-conformity will thus remain unheard
and she will spend her last days in the seclusion of a mental hospital—her
punishment for defying the Symbolic order. In the same way as Vannina, who
aborts the pregnancy that her husband has, quite literally, imposed on her,
Piera’s mother also refuses to obey a patriarchal system that requires her to be
mother and wife. But unlike the protagonist of Donna in guerra, who will
eventually manage to free herself from the confining ties of patriarchal
motherhood through a series of encounters with emblematic female figures,
Piera’s mother will meet Suna’s similar tragic fate of isolation. And it is perhaps
no coincidence that both characters who subvert patriarchal sexual norms are
made to die by Maraini. In this respect, what has been argued about the reasons
of Suna’s defeat by the patriarchal system that oppresses her, a defeat which
has been seen as imputable to the lack of the support from a community of
women, may also be applied to Piera’s mother. However, I would like to
advance an interpretation of the novels that refutes a negative reading of the
same, as if, to borrow Itala T. C. Rutter’s words, “explorations of new ways of
being must generally end, for women today, inconclusively” (Rutter, 1990,
p.570). Following on from this premise, and as will become clearer after my
analysis of Lettere a Marina, by bringing the three works into dialogue with
each other I shall put forward a positive interpretation of Maraini’s message as
a call for female solidarity which, however, does not renounce the possibility of
“incalculable [gender] choreographies” (Derrida, 1982, p.76). Piera’s
description of her mother is insightful, in that it encapsulates the notion of a
‘challenge’—in the sense of subversion—of the system, and is therefore
consonant with an analysis of female sexuality in Maraini’s work. It will thus
serve the function of introducing the last of the three novels under discussion.
Thematically related to the other two works as far as the re-appropriation of
one’s identity is concerned, and virtually contemporary to Storia di Piera,23
Lettere a Marina consists of a string of unsent letters which Bianca, the firstperson narrating voice, writes to her lesbian ex-lover Marina, a process which
will lead the protagonist into an introspective journey. Bianca’s name is
reminiscent not only of a blank piece of paper waiting to be written upon but
also, through a sliding metonymy of references, the idea of the body as
understood by Foucault—namely, a medium where cultural values are
inscribed. “Dire di me donna con una lingua maschile è una miserabile
contraddizione”, one of the female protagonists of Lettere a Marina warns us.24
Such is, in Adriana Cavarero’s formulation, the condition of woman, who “in this
speaking her own alienation from language, […] reproduces, in action,
alienation itself” (1993, p.190). If the universal is masculine, and heterosexual,
then it follows that Bianca as woman, and a lesbian, is marked off by the system
twice over. Used as a tool to discuss differences between the sexes, in Maraini’s
literary production the narration often becomes a privileged means of selfdiscovery. Indeed, it might be seen as a device used by women to free
Aigne ©2013 UCC
23
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
themselves from the constraints of a society modelled on a master (father,
husband, son?) / slave (mother, wife, daughter?) dialectic.
Bianca is constantly reminded of the need to escape a binary system and the
imposition of rigid sexual categories. This is exemplified by the recurring
obsession of people surrounding her with her being ‘alone’: “Il giornalaio mi
chiede: è sola? Non capisco bene cosa vuol dire sola senza figli sola senza
marito sola senza madri padre sorelle?”.25 In what seems to be an echo of
Bianca’s concerns, Butler asks why it should be that marriage or legal contracts
become the basis on which health care benefits, for instance, are allocated—
namely, the basis for social recognition. It is her contention that, in a society
where heterosexuality is the norm, “the belief is that culture itself requires that
a man and a woman produce a child”. And it is this ‘man’ and ‘woman’ binarism
that ought to be stressed here: in Lettere a Marina the woman who loves men
also loves women. She is not—as Butler would have it—socially intelligible.
Bodies generate (and, if we agree with Foucault, are generated by) power
relations, which, in turn, translate into incarnated binary constructs.
Interestingly though and in line with the above, not only is the protagonist of
the novel at odds with the gender roles patriarchal society would expect her to
fulfil, but she seems equally unwilling to embrace a monolithic homosexuality.
Rather, she appears more inclined to perform what Butler defines as a process
or a becoming, thus resisting an essentialist, prescriptive interpretation of
sexuality—a position that resonates with the principle that gender is but a “free
floating artifice” (Butler, 1990, p.9).
On the other hand, it is also true that the coexistence of lesbianism and
bisexuality in the text remains far from unproblematic. The remark of Bianca’s
friend, Chantal, that “amare il corpo dell’uomo è un atto di intelligenza col
nemico” is just an example.26 For Chantal, the only true lesbian in the novel, to
be bisexual is to negotiate with heterosexual society. The implications of such a
predicament are not difficult to foresee. Indeed, one is here faced with the
paradox that the rejection of compulsory heterosexuality is carried out through
the perpetuation of the very same binary structure which lies at its foundations.
On the contrary and if we align ourselves with Derrida, action is required to
move beyond those binary dichotomies which would all, inevitably, come down
to the master (man)/slave (woman) dialectics. But this does not mean
privileging the feminine side of the debate either, as it would be but a repetition
of the hierarchy—however reversed. In other words, the point is not displacing
a dominant discourse (which we have said is recognised as marked as
masculine) with its feminine counterpart. Indeed, to say that women love men,
and cannot love women, is the same as to say that women love women, and
cannot love men. It is only the terms of the equation that change, not the effect.
This also raises a point on the ambiguity which lies in the use of language and
the limitations intrinsic to language itself—namely, its undecidability. And is it
not perhaps significant that, at odds as he is with the logocentrism of the
Western world, Derrida has chosen dance—that it to say, a non-verbal form of
Aigne ©2013 UCC
24
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
art—for his metaphor? Following on from this premise, it would be too
tempting to deduce that the novel ends in a reaffirmation of heterosexuality, a
view taken by Beverly Ballaro (1996, p.185) from Bianca’s statement that “ho
preferito il figlio per una tendenza malefica colpevole all’abbraccio con l’altro
da sé il diverso”.27 Indeed, however ambiguous Bianca’s claim is, such a view is
unnecessarily simplistic. If it is true that Bianca, having given up on Marina,
starts a relationship with the barman Damiano, it is also true that, towards the
end of the novel, she feels an impulse to kiss his stepmother (who is also his
lover). This reading finds further endorsement in a dream scene. Bianca is lying
in bed and falls asleep; she starts dreaming about Damiano but soon after,
between their bodies, an unidentified female figure makes an appearance, and
Bianca finds herself fantasising about this unexpected presence.
By renouncing an arbitrary resolution of the sexuality of her female
protagonist, then, Maraini seems to be warning the readers against the
relativity of culturally determined gender roles, reminding them instead of the
infinite spectrum of permutations gender might take. The author’s stance on
the question of female homosexuality would seem to encourage this
interpretation: “Io dico che l’eterosessualità, così come viene vissuta oggi, non è
né ‘normale’, né ‘naturale’, né ‘sana’” (Bellezza, 1981).28 And again, on the same
topic: “Diciamo [dell’omosessualità] che è deviante rispetto alla norma, ma che
norma sessuale abbiamo quando scambiamo la pornografia per libertà e
riduciamo i corpi a degli oggetti?” (Bonanate, 1981).29
Bianca lives her sexuality in a way that is far from unproblematic for her, as
exemplified by the anxiety which always accompanies, in the text, the erotic
encounters with her lesbian lover (to the point of seeing the reflection of her
own mother between her lover’s legs) and which one critic has aptly called
“decisive moments of freaking out in the text” (Ballaro, 1996, p.184). Yet, this
ambivalence notwithstanding, a resolution of the protagonist’s sexuality is
clearly not the intention of the author. As such, all throughout the novel
Bianca’s “fraught sexuality” (Gabriele, 2002, p.250) remains as fluid as the
sexual identities portrayed within. Bianca’s sexual identity becomes a nonidentity, one which evades any form of encoding. The very last scene would
reinforce this interpretation. Her resolution not to go to bed but instead to take
a late-night train to Sicily, would thus come to epitomise an adamant rebuttal of
all that the “grande letto dai buoni odori di vita coniugale” signifies—namely,
the constraints of marriage and of marital life as the only option for women
within patriarchy.30 The sentence reads as follows: “ho deciso di non andare a
dormire. Non sopporto più l’odore del vecchio letto matrimoniale’.31 Here the
Italian language better conveys the opening up of a whole series of
metaphorical associations linked to the image of the bed,32 which more than
once appears in the novel as a reminder of the compulsory reproduction
already denounced by Rich and which, through the adoption of a Marxist
approach, Wittig has linked to the exploitation of the category of women by the
heterosexual society (Wittig, 1982).
Aigne ©2013 UCC
25
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
I would now like to briefly call for a comparison between the three works on
the theme of female solidarity. My starting point is the character of Basilia,
Bianca’s next-door neighbour, who lends itself to a feminist reading focusing on
the mother-daughter bond as a fundamental presence in women’s lives. From
Julia Kristeva to Luce Irigaray to Luisa Muraro (not to forget American poet and
essayist Adrienne Rich), feminists have focussed on revising the role of the
maternal and the recuperation of a maternal symbolic order. Their return to
the mother is not “regressive, as Freudian psychoanalysis would have it, but
rather progressive: it represents a defiant move forward to the recognition of
both the mother as primary female figure and the role she plays in shaping a
woman’s life” (Picchietti, 2002, p.76). In Lettere a Marina, through Basilia,
Maraini prompts us to look at how beneficial the redefinition of women’s bonds
with their mothers (and not necessarily a biological one) might be. Bianca’s
neighbour, a mother of two, embodies female subjugation within a patriarchal
society, quite tellingly exemplified by the macabre stories she often recounts,
which tell of women as victims of a distorted societal and familial system. It is
thanks to Basilia that Bianca can recuperate her past relationship with her
mother, and by extension with all women, in a climactic moment when she
hears Basilia sing just as, in Bianca’s memory, her peasant mother would have
done—thus prefiguring the re-enactment of a female oral tradition. Read in this
light, Basilia massaging Bianca’s shoulders while singing translates into a
metaphorical act and denotes the inscription into Bianca of ancient values and
beliefs which pertain to a genealogy of women, a far too long forgotten female
authenticity; a chain in which Basilia is but a link. And in so doing, “Basilia helps
Bianca replant her roots in the dark recesses of women’s history” (Picchietti,
2002, p.133), and retrieve her past (the story of her own self she had forgotten)
which is mirrored in the protagonist being able to finally complete the novel
she was striving to finish, thus, metaphorically, she re-appropriates her own
voice. Bianca finds in Basilia that tenderness that Marina seems incapable to
provide her, being obsessed as she is with the wish to possess her lover. And
through this nurturing lovingness Bianca has also (re)discovered a bond with
the figure of her mother. Because motherhood, as we perceive it in the text, not
only transcends biological constraints, it also reaches out to women across
generations. As such, Basilia’s passing down an oral tradition to Bianca appears
to be consonant with Luce Irigary’s description, in ‘Body Against Body: In
Relation to the Mother’, of the mother/daughter relationship as “an extremely
explosive core in our societies”, which “leads to shaking up the patriarchal
order” (Irigaray, 1993, p.86).
Bianca, seen as a more mature, self-conscious version of Vannina, shows us that
patriarchal libidinal economy has to be challenged from within the system.
Indeed, Donna in guerra recounts the process of the consciousness-raising of
the protagonist and concludes with her embarking on a journey towards selfawareness of whose outcome, however, we are given no account. Following this
logic, and tracing some continuity between the two works, Bianca could rightly
be seen as the ‘new’ Vannina as we have left her after she has freed herself from
Aigne ©2013 UCC
26
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
the constraints of conjugal life. In the same way as Vannina with the female
figures she encounters along her path, Bianca proves to be receptive to the offer
of allegiance from her mentor Basilia, an allegiance which she uses as a Trojan
horse to oppose a phallocentric system that wants to silence her, her condition
being represented, on a metaphorical level, by her inability to finish the novel
she is working on as a professional writer. Thus, unlike the mother in Storia di
Piera, silenced by a phallocratic system which does not recognise her, she is
able to find her own voice (again, metaphorically, resuming her own story).
This is a call, on Maraini’s part, for the recuperation of a female genealogy that
transcends biology but also, it should be borne in mind, any prescriptive
interpretations of female sexuality, celebrating instead its ineffable nature. As
such, the suggestive formulation of the choreography of gender which opened
this article becomes the key to the reading of the sexual identities portrayed in
the three novels. Gender—seen as a dance—is reminiscent of a Derridean
process which reminds us of the infinite spectrum of permutations it might
take. This might not provide feminism with a final answer on how to move from
resistance into action, it is just the first step of the political programme which is
called into question, but is a step nonetheless. It exposes a logic of exclusion
and calls for the construction of alternative spaces. It suggests that neither
biology nor social constructs can define such a thing as the female sexed body.
Only by evading an encoding logic will it be possible to recognise and celebrate
both the male and female sex, defined not in relation (opposition) to one
another but to each of their own intrinsic specificities, which are as
‘incalculable’ as the choreographies of Derrida’s dream.
In Bodies that Matter, Butler questions the mutual exclusivity of heterosexuality
and homosexuality (Butler, 1993). This is hardly a discovery, if one considers
Freud’s understanding of the polymorphous nature of human desire which led
him to the assumption that “a very considerable measure of latent or
unconscious homosexuality can be detected in all normal people” (YoungBruehl, 2002, p.265; emphasis is mine). Maraini seems in agreement with these
notions on sexuality and, in what could be read as a prefiguring of Butler’s
concerns, in these works herein discussed, she presents heterosexuality and
homosexuality as far from being mutually exclusive. By staging non-normative
sexualities, Maraini provides, through her characters, a call for the
understanding of gender roles as a product of rigid mechanisms of power
which result in patterns of behaviour that, consolidated through time, translate
into the political, social and cultural supremacy of the male over the female
gender. Moreover, if we return to Butler’s critique of Wittig’s theories, the
author can be seen as advocating for a refusal of the idea of a fixed, monolithic
sexual essence—be it heterosexual or homosexual. Far from falling into the trap
of an essentialist discourse, Maraini’s characters, through their irreducible
sexualities, could be read as opposing “radical disjunction between straight and
gay [that] replicates the kind of disjunctive binarism that she herself [Wittig]
characterises as the divisive philosophical gesture of the straight mind” (Butler,
1990, p.165). Finally, as for how deconstruction can help feminism move from a
Aigne ©2013 UCC
27
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
mere critique of patriarchal ideology into political action, as the present
analysis has sought to demonstrate, the answer in Maraini’s texts would reside
precisely in the relationship between women and the connection between their
everyday lives and the socially codified roles they are called to perform. The
author’s subversive narrative calls for a revolution which starts from within
(within one’s body but also our mother’s, symbolic or not) and it does so while
challenging rigid discourses on gender and eluding the traditional hetero/homo
dichotomy. Such is the message that underpins the three texts, and which is
condensed in Bianca’s reasoning over “a more fluid way of being sexed”
(Maraini, 2008b, p.87). In short, Maraini’s genealogies are less a question of
seeking a unifying subject (or a “label”, in Bianca’s words33) than an expression
of the blurring of the boundaries of a single category in depicting, as Maraini
does, continuous ways of becoming.
Bibliography
Ballaro, B., 1996. Making the Lesbian Body: Writing and Desire in Dacia
Maraini’s Lettere a Marina. In: L. Benedetti, J. L. Hairston and S. M. Ross, eds.
1996. Gendered Contexts: New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies. New York:
Peter Lang.
Bellezza, D., 1981. Questo libro sulla memoria di una donna, Paese Sera, April
22nd
1981
[online].
Available
at:
http://www.daciamaraini.it/romanzi/testi_critici/lettereamarina.htm
[Accessed 13
March 2012].
Bonanate, M., 1981. Se la donna ama una donna, Gazzetta del Popolo, April 18th
1981
[online].
Available
at:
http://www.daciamaraini.it/romanzi/testi_critici/lettereamarina.htm
[Accessed 13
March 2012].
Bongarzoni, O., 1980. Dibattito su un libro difficile: L’incredibile storia di Piera,
Paese Sera, May 23rd 1980 [online]. Available at: http://www.daciamaraini.it/saggiinterviste/testi_critici/storiadipiera.htm [Accessed: 3 January 2012].
Butler, J., 1988. Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: an Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40 (4), pp.519-531.
Butler, J., 1993. Bodies that Matter. London and New York: Routledge.
Butler, J., 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. London and New
York: Routledge.
Cavallaro, D., 2007. Con tutto da ricominciare: Vannina’s Spiritual Journey in
Dacia Maraini’s Donna in guerra. Annali d’Italianistica, (25), pp.379-96.
Cavarero, A., (1990), 1995. In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Reading of Ancient
Philosophy. A. Cavarero (trans). Cambridge UK: Polity Press.
Cavarero, A., (1985), 1993. Towards a Theory of Sexual Difference. In: The
Lonely Mirror. S. Kemp and P. Bono, eds. London and New York, Routledge.
Aigne ©2013 UCC
28
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
Dagnino, P., 1993. Fra madre e marito: The Mother / Daughter Relationship in
Dacia Maraini’s Lettere a Marina. In: Visions and Revisions: Women in Italian
Culture. M. Cicioni, N. Prunster, eds. Providence: Berg.
Dagnino, P., 2000. Revolution in the Laundry. In: R. Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, A.
Testaferri, eds. The pleasure of Writing: Critical Essays on Dacia Maraini. West
Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press.
Derrida, J. and McDonald, C. V., 1982. Choreographies. Diacritics, 12(2), pp.6676.
Freud, S. The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman (1920). In:
E. Young-Bruel, ed. 2002. Freud on Women. London: Vintage.
Gabriele, T., 2002. From Prostitution to Transsexuality: Gender Identity and
Subversive Sexuality in Dacia Maraini, in MLN January 2002, pp.241-56.
Irigaray, L., (1987),1993. Sexes and Genealogies. G. C. Gill (Trans.). New York:
Columbia University Press.
Kirby, V., 2006. Judith Butler Live Theory. London and New York: Continuum.
Kristeva, J., 1974. Revolution in Poetic Language. In: T. Moi, ed. 1986. The
Kristeva Reader. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lazzaro-Weis, C., 1988. Gender and Genre in Italian Feminist Literature in the
Seventies. Italica, 65(4), pp.293-307.
Maraini, D., (1975), 2008a. Donna in guerra. Milan: BUR Scrittori
Contemporanei.
Maraini, D., (1981), 2008b. Lettere a Marina. Milan: BUR Scrittori
Contemporanei.
Maraini, D. and Degli Esposti, P., (1980) 2006. Storia di Piera. Milan: BUR
Scrittori Contemporanei.
Marks, E. and De Courtivron, I., eds. 1980. New French Feminisms: An Anthology,
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Muraro, L’Ordine simbolico della madre (1991), 2006. Rome: Editori Riuniti.
Picchietti, A., 2002. Relational Spaces: Daughterhood, Motherhood, and
Sisterhood in Dacia Maraini’s Fiction and Films, Cranbury: Associated University
Press.
Rich, A., 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New
York: W W Norton.
Ruffili, P. Tre Domande a Dacia Maraini. Il Resto del Carlino, November 18th 1975
[online].
Available
at:
http://www.daciamaraini.it/romanzi/testi_critici/donnainguerra.htm [Accessed 18
March 2012].
Aigne ©2013 UCC
29
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
Rutter, I. T. C., 1990. Feminist Theory as Practice: Italian Feminism and the Work
of Teresa de Lauretis and Dacia Maraini. Women’s Studies International Forum,
13 (6), pp.565-575.
Seger, M., 2011. A Conversation with Dacia Maraini. World Literature Today, 85
(4) pp.28-30.
Tamburri, A. J., 1990. Dacia Maraini’s Donna in guerra: Victory or Defeat? In:
Contemporary Women Writers in Italy: A Modern Renaissance, Santo L. Arico ed.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Wittig, M., (1980) 1992. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon
Press.
1
Maraini’s literary and theatrical production dates from the Sixties to the present. Not only has she since
been interested in women’s position at the time of her writing, but also in earlier periods. See for example
her Campiello prize winner novel La lunga vita di Marianna Ucria (1990) which, following the life of a
mute duchess living in the eighteenth century (the inspiration for the character came to Maraini from a
portrait of an aristocratic Sicilian ancestor of hers, Duchess Marianna Alliata Valguarnera), can be read as
a timeless narration of the silencing of women in patriarchy. Similarly, it is worth mentioning her 1985
novel Isolina, based on Maraini’s own investigation and reconstruction of the murder of Isolina Canuti, a
young woman brutally murdered while pregnant and whose remains were found in the Adige river, at the
beginning of the twentieth century. Since the main suspect was a member of the army and he accused the
socialists of manipulating the news, the case soon acquired political implications.
2
Maraini’s position can be said to align itself to that of art historian and feminist Carla Lonzi—perhaps
the most influential voice of Italian ‘feminism of difference’. The title of Lonzi’s best known pamphlet
Sputiamo su Hegel: La donna vaginale e la donna clitoridea (Let’s spit on Hegel: the clitoral and the
vaginal woman) quite tellingly underscores how the body had become, for 1970s Italian feminists, a
starting point for the advocacy of sexual liberation.
3
The essay ‘The Straight Mind’, read by Wittig in 1978 at the MLA Convention in New York City, was
first published in 1980.
4
A notable exception is Tommasina Gabriele’s illuminating study on the subversion of gender identity in
Donna in guerra and Lettere a Marina, the play Dialogo di una prostituta con un suo cliente and a crime
story from the collection Buio: ‘Chi ha ucciso Paolo Gentile?’ (Gabriele 2002, pp.241-56).
5
This is a position with which the author herself concurs. In an interview released the same year of the
publication of the novel, she stated: ‘Questo è il mio romanzo più coscientemente femminista’ (‘This is
my most conscious feminist novel’, quoted in Ruffili 1975).
6
“It’s true”; “Those blonde arms of his have an incredible strength and with this strength he supports our
marriage”. This and all subsequent translations are my own (Maraini, 2008a, p.142).
7
“By nature you are good-hearted, calm, affectionate, patient, submissive; but today you are being a
freak, you are going against nature” (Maraini, 2008a, p.141).
8
The term ‘phallogocentrism’, which stems from the merging of ‘logocentrism’ and ‘phallocentrism’, is a
neologism that Derrida himself coined to designate the maleness of Western metaphysics which, being
based as it is on binary pairings, contains the premise for woman’s debasement.
9
“I started to clear the table. I did the dishes. I scoured the saucepans. I rinsed the glasses” (Maraini,
2008a, p.4).
10
Butler 1993, p.8. Having made clear the distinction between motherhood as a ‘potential relationship of
any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children’ and the ‘institution’ that secures male control
over it, in the introduction to her work Rich contends: ‘this book is not an attack on the family or on
mothering except as defined and restricted under patriarchy’ (Rich 1976, pp.13-14).
11
This is also the position implicit in Virginia Picchietti’s argument: ‘the return to the maternal realm
Tota and Giottina represent can actually lead to the re-evaluation of the pre-Oedipal mutuality in the
daughter’s life’ (Picchietti, 2002, p.119).
12
The importance of the concept of ‘sisterhood’ in this and other works by Maraini, and, specifically in
connection with Donna in guerra, the instrumental role of the characters of Suna and Rosa Colla in
Vannina’s liberation, have been aptly discussed by Picchietti (Picchietti 2002, pp.105-137).
Aigne ©2013 UCC
30
Beyond Duality: the ‘Choreography’ of Gender
in Dacia Maraini’s novels
MARIA MORELLI
13
My choice of the adjective ‘polymorphous’ applied to the character’s unclassifiable sexuality is in
agreement with Tommasina Gabriele’s views on the restrictiveness implicit in the term ‘bisexual’ (as in
any other term attempting at defining sexual identity). The critic distances herself from what she sees as
the limitations intrinsic to the notion of an immutable, fixed gender identity and, in her study of Donna in
guerra, she applies her conclusions mainly to the analysis of Suna’s sexuality (Gabriele 2002, pp.241-56).
14
Wittig indeed makes it clear that ‘this mark’, namely sexual difference, ‘does not predate oppression
‘but is rather the logical outcome of the same (Wittig 1992, p.11; my emphasis).
15
With reference to this point, it ought to be mentioned that other characters in Donna in guerra blur
gender boundaries. One example, and this time a male one, is Vannina’s husband, who will end up
developing a (on his part) morbid relationship with the much younger Santino, with whom Giacinto
willingly spends most of his time fishing and whose presence (and absence) dictates Giacinto’s mood.
Although their bond never acquires openly homosexual connotations, it nevertheless goes beyond fatherly
love, acquiring instead, I would contend, a queer twinge.
16
Picchietti, 2002. The practice of ‘affidamento’, developed within the Milanese feminist group ‘Libreria
delle Donne’, sees a woman (usually the less experienced and younger one) relying upon another woman,
who will act as her mentor. A bond of (symbolic) motherhood-sisterhood, which transcends the biological
sphere, is thus established. For a more detailed account of this practice, see Luisa Muraro’s influential
L’ordine simbolico della madre (Muraro 1991, 2006).
17
“In the summer she belonged to others […] in winter she would lock herself away, sleep” (Maraini and
Esposti, 2006, p.22).
18
First used by Lacan during his seminar of 1953-4 in relation to Hegel and his master-slave dialectic, the
term has been largely reappropriated by French feminists, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva among others.
In particular, Kristeva sees ‘jouissance’ as a form of specifically feminine pleasure associated with the
semiotic flow and the maternal ‘chora’. For a more detailed exploration of the polysemy of the word, see
Introduction 3 by the editors of the volume in New French Feminisms: An Anthology, eds. Elaine Marks
and Isabelle de Courtivron where jouissance is defined in the following terms: ‘This pleasure, when
attributed to a woman, is considered to be of a different order from the pleasure that is represented within
the male libidinal economy often described in terms of the capitalist gain and profit motive. Women’s
jouissance carries with it the notion of fluidity, diffusion, duration. It is a kind of potlatch in the world of
orgasms, a giving, expending, dispensing of pleasure without concern about ends or closure’ [p.36, n. 8].
19
“A wonderful force” (Maraini and Esposti, 2006, p.108).
20
“A tragic person” (Maraini and Esposti, 2006, p.15).
21
“I have the impression that at times my father thought he had made a sort of man: half man and half
woman” (Maraini and Esposti, 2006, p.37).
22
“My mother is a so complex person that I would not know how to define her, any definition would limit
her” (Maraini and Esposti, 2006, p.108).
23
Storia di Piera was published in 1981, after Maraini had been working on it for four years.
24
“Speaking about myself with a masculine tongue is a miserable contradiction” (Maraini, 2008b, p.39).
25
“The newspaper vendor asks me ‘are you alone’? I do not quite understand what it means alone without
children alone without husband alone without mothers fathers sisters?” (Maraini 2008b, p.39).
26
“To love the male body is a sign of connivance with the enemy” (Maraini, 2002b, p.22).
27
“I turned to my son, yielding to a baleful and guilty inclination to the other sex, the different other”
(Maraini, 2008b, pp.114-115).
28
“I say that heterosexuality as we live it today is neither ‘normal’ nor ‘natural’ nor ‘sane’”.
29
“We say [of homosexuality] that it is deviant with respect to the norm, but what sexual norm do we
have when we take pornography for freedom and reduce bodies to objects?”
30
“Big bed with its good smells of conjugal life” (Maraini, 2008b, p.21).
31
“I decided not to go to bed. I can’t stand the smell of the old double bed any more” (Maraini, 2008b,
p.203).
32
In the text we find ‘letto matrimoniale’ (‘double bed’), which in English literally translates with the less
used, and far more evocative, ‘conjugal bed’.
33
“Eppure ci deve essere un modo più ricco e fluido di essere sessuati senza cacciarsi dentro un destino
da etichetta” (‘still, there must be a richer and more fluid way of being sexed without stuffing oneself into
a label-like destiny’) (Maraini 2008b, p.87).
Aigne ©2013 UCC
31

Download Report